David Beaty almost found the right solution to the Kansas football program’s main problem. In fact, he only missed by one letter. Beaty hired himself again as offensive coordinator. He should have fired himself as head coach.
Oh well, the ‘f’ is only two keys to the left of the ‘h.’ ...

Morgantown, W.V. — In the wake of Saturday’s closer-than-expected, 38-22 loss to West Virginia, first-year Kansas athletic director Jeff Long accommodated my request for an interview about his impressions of the football program at the halfway point of the season.
“You know, we got a ...

Just 53 Saturdays ago, Khalil Herbert cut around, sped past and bowled over West Virginia defenders to finish with a whopping 291 yards in a game Kansas lost, 56-34.
Herbert carried the ball 36 times that afternoon and has 28 carries five games into this season.
How did he do it?
“After ...

Interesting first day of the trial on the scandal that has the potential to rock college basketball.
So let’s try to figure out what’s going on.
The feds are trying to prove that Adidas officials, including Jim Gatto, defrauded universities by stripping athletes of their amateur status by ...

Ryan Willis left the Kansas football program taking far less confidence out of it than he brought into it. He was a beaten young man in need of a fresh start.
So he went to a winning ACC football program that already had four scholarship quarterbacks on the roster and didn’t have room for a ...

University of Kansas freshman post player David McCormack obliged when asked for a self-scout.
“I would say, I’m just kind of like a brute force,” McCormack said. “I’m a hard worker. I go after every rebound, every loose ball. I run the floor. I bring whatever I can to help the team ...

Carter Stanley’s nameplate was on an empty table in the front of the Gridiron Room, where select Kansas football players do media interviews every Tuesday afternoon. The empty table reserved for Peyton Bender was tucked in the left corner of the room.
Neither player ever showed, a sure sign ...

Gary Woodland finished the PGA Tour season ranked 29th on the money list with $3,108,907, 26th in the final FedEx Cup standings and is 40th in the Official World Golf Rankings.
He’s done that well before, even better in 2011 when was 17th on the money list, but in many ways this felt like ...

Look for eight more Big 12 defenses to play Kansas the way Baylor did Saturday in scoring a 26-7 victory vs. the Jayhawks: Put eight men in the box, gang tackle Pooka Williams and trust that KU’s receivers won’t get open deep.
So if the Kansas passing game can’t take the heat off of the ...

Waco, Texas — Embracing the safe, logical path of predicting the favorite to defeat the visitor in Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. kickoff at McLane Stadium easily can be defended.
For one thing, one of the loudest unwritten rules of predicting sporting contests advises to never pick against a long ...

Counting sacks as negative rushing yards qualifies as one of the sillier statistical practices of college football.
So, for the purpose of this exercise, let’s count sack yardage against the Kansas passing game, not against the rushing numbers.
Given that adaptation, KU is averaging 5.57 ...

Kansas junior defensive end Azur Kamara remembers well the day he registered for his freshman year at Central High in Phoenix, a school known more for basketball than football.
The memory is just as clear for Central's head football coach, John Clanton, a nose tackle for Frank Solich’s first ...

In the opening week of the season, the Kansas offensive line looked exactly like what it was — a collection of strangers thrown together at the last minute. Multiple bad snaps and general lack of cohesiveness made it look as if the unit had gone backward, if anything, from last season’s ...

If you feel like you learn something new every day about Anthony Williams Jr., better known as Pooka, don’t consider yourself out of the loop. Even fourth-year Kansas football coach David Beaty forever picks up fresh material about the sensational running back.
Beaty revealed after Kansas ...

Hahnville, about 25 miles upriver from New Orleans, is in the region of Louisiana known as the River Parishes.
Early in the 20th century, it was famous for being the 1891 birthplace of jazz trumpeter Thomas “Papa Mutt” Carey.
Later in the century, it became known as a high school football ...

It took the 98th game of the post-Mark Mangino era for something to happen to make an awakening from a prolonged slump for the Kansas football program feel even possible.
Freshman Pooka Williams Jr., the speedy running back from Louisiana, made such an amazing debut Saturday in Mount Pleasant, ...

No matter how great a new product looks on paper, it’s going to be tough to sell unless the salesman has that first satisfied customer to stand as proof of concept. For the Kansas football program's Louisiana recruiting plan, junior safety Mike Lee represents proof of concept.
Associate head ...

Mount Pleasant, Mich. — Debuting Kansas freshman running back Anthony “Pooka” Williams killed more than a nine-year road losing streak late Saturday afternoon, so far from his hometown of Marrero, La.
He also, at the very least, put on hold the apathy of a football fan base that had ...

Mount Pleasant, Mich. — In sports, long streaks of futility tend to end on a fluke play. Many a hitter has broken his batting slump with a swinging bunt single. A tipped ball that leads to an interception returned for a touchdown or a blocked punt is how football teams are supposed to score ...

Jon Kirby, who covers Kansas football for Rivals, said hello to Kansas punt returner Kwamie Lassiter II and told him he remembered watching his father play for KU as a defensive back.
“He’d hit you,” Kirby said.
Responded Lassiter II: “He said he was a hard hitter. I believe ...